The Anti Candida Diet: Food List

What’s the number 1 reason why most people fail to get better from candida? Not following the correct diet. 90% of your candida problems will go away if you have the discipline to follow the correct anti-candida diet for 3-5 months as part of a strict candida cleansing regimen.

There are many misconceptions on what you can or can not eat during a candida cleanse… should I avoid vinegar? Is it okay to consume fruits? What kind of oils can I use to cook with? Can I drink milk? kefir? Can I eat potatoes?! Let me outline the entire anti candida diet to you in English!

Foods to Avoid:

First, the foods you should avoid. They are:

1. Any refined or processed sugars. Also avoid other types of sugars such as rapadura, and turbinado. Do not consume honey, or syrups as well. In short, simply avoid any and all types of sugars. This alone turns off many people, and is extremely extremely hard to follow. If you break this rule just once, you essentially are back to square one.

2. Don’t eat any that was pre-made. If you didn’t prepare it yourself, don’t consume it at all. This includes stuff like TV dinners, buffet food, dressing for salad, ketchup, mustard, you name it. If you work everyday, this will be a pain to follow. I suggest finding a casual health restaurant that can prepare food the way you want it to. If you like around NYC, there’s a place called “The Pump” that is great for health freaks.

3. Avoid fake foods such as egg beaters and margarine. These aren’t real!

4. Absolutely, positively no wheat, corn wheat flour, potatoes, or white flour. Do not eat any pasta, or macaroni. You may eat a little rice, but don’t eat more than a bowl a week, to be safe.

5. Do not drink milk at all, especially pasteurized milk. I can write an entire blog post about how dangerous and unhealthy pasteurized milk is. On the other hand, you may drink some kefir, and consume some yogurt, as long as they are organic and unpasteurized. A word on kefir though: Kefir contains probiotics which is great to combat candida, but some people simply need to avoid it for the first few weeks or so. To be safe, don’t start drinking kefir right away. Wait 1 month or so.

You may drink other alternatives such as almond milk, but again drink them sparingly.

6. Do not use oils such corn and peanut oil when preparing food.

7. No peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, guys! (I know they’re yummy, but..) Do not eat any dried fruit as well. Not that they aren’t healthy, trust me they are… it’s just that when we are candida cleansing, we need to be extremely careful not to consume anything that has even the tiniest bit of sugar in it.

8. And restricting sugars also means… restricting fruits! Yup… fruits! Hard to believe, right? The good news is that we can consume some fruits, such as green apples, blueberries, and raspberries. Unfortunately, we can’t even consume a lot of these fruits as well. When you’re candida cleansing, you are only allowed to eat just 1 serving of fruit a day.

9. Don’t eat anything that you usually eat regularly currently.

If you’ve been eating chicken breast for months, give it a break, and stop eating it. Eat red meat instead. You may be allergic to it, and giving your body a break from it while you’re cleansing will pay dividends.

10. Do not drink any coffee or black tea at all. Not only is it bad for candida, but it can be extremely tough to take for your kidneys. Just stick to fresh water, guys.

11. No refined table salt should be used. Instead opt for Celtic salt, or kosher salt.

12. No chocalate. Nope!

13. This goes without saying, but nothing deep-fried should be consumed as well. In addition, do not buy any deli meats. If you regularly buy a sandwich from a deli for lunch, don’t do so anymore.

14. Don’t eat anything that leads to constipation.

15. Instead of sugar, you can replace it with substances such as Stevia, or Xylitol.

Important tip: Do not eat anything after 8:00 PM. Your body simply stops digesting after 8 PM, and starts to revert to “sleep mode”. This even includes healthy treats too. You may drink liquids though.

So, now that I explained what you can’t eat (an exhaustive list!)… let me outline what you can eat during a candida cleanse.

Foods you can eat:

1. I was lying when I said you should avoid grains during a candida cleanse. In reality, there are some grains you can consume such as quinoa, and teff, as well as barley and millet once in awhile. You can also consume wild rice, and basmati rice with legumes. However, make sure they were prepared with pungent spices, as it really helps with digestion.

After the first month, you may include foods such as hot cereals that do not contain any wheat or corn. I usually eat these for breakfast a month into my candida cleanse.

2. You may consume legumes such as mung beans, green peas, black beans (Mmm.. Chipotle!), and Lentils. However, avoid canned beans like the plague, as they usually contain some sugar.

3. You may eat sprours only if you sprouted them yourself. Otherwise they might contain molds.

4. You may consume grasses in the form of green supplements. Do not drink any wheatgrass juice from juice stores (Don’t hang out in Jamba Juice!)
5. Vinegar, if raw. Apple Cider vinear is especially healthy to drink when cleansing, if it contains the mother. You may use balsamic vinegar as salad dressing too.

6. Fermented foods. Sauerkraut is an example, but only consume it if you prepared them yourself (notice a pattern here?). If you eat sauerkraut that was made from someone else, you risk eating contaminated food which will only made you feel sicker.

7. Almond/hazelnut butter. You may also consume some sorts of nuts such as Brazil Nuts (very healthy!), and hazelnuts. These are incredibly good for the skin as well, and are consider “Super Foods”.

10. Who says you can’t eat meat? But especially try to consume organic and game meats such as game hen, buffalo, and ostrich. There are plenty of burger places that will serve you fresh bison burgers, go to these for lunch!

11. You may consume fish, oysters, salmon, tuna… and most seafood.

12. Milk is one product I told you to avoid, but you may drink rice or almond milk, BUT not soy milk.

13. Try to avod eating starchy veggies for the first few weeks. All other veggies such as spinach are okay to eat.

14. Herbal tea, protein shakes, rice/almond milk, and lassis are okay to drink. One tip is to drink lots of ginger teas as they are incredibly helpful for digestion.

I hope this list of what to avoid and what is ok gives you some clarity. I will explain how to prepare your food in a future blog post. Stay tuned!